Cricket rising

May 19, 2003
by Dr Winford James

So we beat the mighty Australia by three wickets and with two and a half sessions to spare in the fourth and final test. And we beat them in a commanding way. We surpassed a record final-innings target of 417 runs, and we did it with a team of mostly inexperienced (though vastly talented) young men after three consecutive (and if you add the five in Australia earlier, eight) defeats. It was an arresting, vivifying, glorifying, health-promoting victory after many gut-wrenching, heart-weakening moments, and it dwarfed the earlier Australian successes. I feel nice. I feel good. I feel forgiving. I want the feelings to last.

But will they? Well, let's review the series in general and the match in particular.

I will immediately take, without argument, Brian Lara's insight that the team improved with each lost match, and Steve Waugh's that they are, unlike others, an emerging team that are conscientiously targeting the bar that the Australians have raised so high. As a team (rather than as individuals) they took the Australians down to the last day of the first three tests, and in the last, they prevailed, again with team spirit but with match-winning individual expressions.

First, the batsmen. Indefensibly left out of the first two tests, Chris Gayle came back and was solid. Given his first chance, young Devon Smith delivered, especially in the unavailing century-plus opening partnership with Gayle in Bridgetown. Lara was majestic throughout in spite of the umpire as only he can; indeed, he killed the Queen's Park bogeyman in the second test. Darren Ganga looked solid and good scoring back-to-back centuries in Georgetown and Port of Spain. The gladiators, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shivnarine Chanderpaul, battled brilliantly, the latter more than the former and, especially in the won test, rose, in keeping with their special talents, to dizzying heights. (Oh! The glorious mannishness of Sarwan before the churlish ungraciousness of Glenn McGrath. The trumpeting self-belief in the pronouncement that he will NOT give up the pull shot, but will make his selections more carefully. And oh oh! Ooh! Chanders' two centuries made with wondrous disdain against the world's best and hardest bowlers - they were pure...what's the word? Ah yes...iconoclasm!). And Omari Banks is a capable, elegant and unflappable batsman and, if he is helped to develop more guile in his bowling, is clearly here to stay.

And what about the bowlers? We still have a long way to travel to match previous days - the sheer, probing pace of Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith; the unreadable spin of Lance Gibbs and Gary Sobers; the elegant and intelligent ruthlessness of the pace of men like Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, Colin Croft, Malcolm Marshall, Vanburn Holder. Drakes and Mervyn Dillon bowled well, and Drakes is, at long last, a bowling all-rounder. But they have to lift the bar several notches to make the enemy uneasy. But young Jermaine Lawson bowled with the promise of not only a world-beater but a world-frightener. Give him time and work, and he will run riot among the world's top batsmen.

The final-test victory of this team of most youthful and inexperienced players against the world's top team will most certainly lift the psychological barrier set up by the Australians. They will have more belief in themselves and less fear of their opponents. From henceforth they will play with strength of skill and strength of mind. And we will conquer the world again.

That's how nice and good I feel!

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